Nick Timothy
MP for West Suffolk · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I was nine years old at the time of the Hillsborough tragedy, and I remember listening to the news of the terrible events on the radio, sitting behind my parents in the car.”
“I think the hon. Lady, whether it is by design or by mistake, misunderstands my point. Of course, there should be accountability and transparency, and there are many ways in which we can do that, but there are ways of doing it that do not jeopardise the operations of the most sensitive organisations in the country by revealing their sourc…”
“My hon. Friend is exactly right. The Prime Minister said this was going to be one of his first acts as Prime Minister; it turns out it is going to be his final act as Prime Minister.”
“They have known grief and suffering none of us would ever wish to experience. This is not a debate about the need for transparency. I am proud to have played a modest part in bringing that about when I worked in the Home Office. Nor is this a debate about the need for accountability.”
“I am confused by that intervention from the hon. Lady, who was the Minister in charge of this Bill. The argument I am making is consistent with the position she brought to the House in January, only to back down when it became controversial.”
“I am tempted to say that the hon. Lady should have a conversation with the Attorney General, who used to prosecute British soldiers and was still appointed to one of the highest offices in the land.”
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“I want to say something about the Bill’s most damaging measures, starting with clause 42, which makes the national curriculum compulsory for all academies. Today, the interim report of the curriculum and assessment review has been published. Just as predicted, the review endorses the Education Secretary’s demand for a curriculum that prioritises non-academic subjects over traditional subjects such as the sciences and geography. Indeed the review throws into doubt the future of the EBacc, which ensures a proper focus on core academic subjects. While there is value to non-academic disciplines, of course, there is only so much time in the school day. Teachers will lose the ability to prioritise what they teach, as well as how, and children risk getting less time in which to learn reading, writing and numeracy skills to an advanced level.”
“Multi-academy trusts have achieved Progress 8 scores far above the national average, with trusts such as the Harris Federation, United Learning, Star Academies, Delta Academies Trust and Ark all performing strongly. The Government’s disregard for evidence with the Bill has provoked massive anger among school leaders. The Children’s Commissioner has said that the Government are “legislating against the things we know work in schools”. Katharine Birbalsingh, the headteacher at Michaela, has called the Bill “catastrophic”. Sir Dan Moynihan, CEO of the Harris Federation, simply asked: “Why are we doing this?” ––[Official Report, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 75, Q160.] [Interruption] If the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) would like to intervene, he may.”
“We heard Labour MPs on Second Reading explicitly rejecting the very concept of academies and demand state-run schools. Some 80% of secondary schools are now academies. Ofsted says that 87% of them are good or outstanding, even though many were previously failing schools that were made academies to turn them around under new leadership. This intervention has been proved to work. Academy freedoms have given heads the space to make bad schools good. According to the fairer schools index, which takes both academic achievement and socioeconomic background into account, the top five state schools in England are all academies: Steiner academy Hereford, Michaela community school, Mercia school, Eden boys’ school, and Eden girls’ leadership academy.”
“We followed what we understood from neurological science and research about how children learn, from work on cultural literacy to the knowledge that higher-level skills are dependent on the automatic mastery of lower-level activity. We turned to synthetic phonics, maths mastery, a knowledge-rich curriculum, teacher-led instruction and traditional academic subjects, and watched pupils fly. When I compare my own education with what my children are taught today, the difference is truly staggering, and yet this Government want to go back to the failed policies of the past and the failed policies that continue to this day in Scotland and Wales, where standards are sadly far lower than in England. We know why: this disastrous journey back is what the unions demand, and it is what those on the left, in their hearts, really want.”
“This Bill—along with the curriculum review, a weakened Ofsted, the threat to SATs in primary schools, the end of free schools and weaker discipline policies—undoes decades of hard-won reform and higher standards. It should be obvious that the objective for our school system is higher standards. Of course, Ministers pay lip service to that idea, but their actions belie their words, not just with this Bill but with the appointment of an academic to run the curriculum review who has criticised past Governments’ “obsession with academic achievement.” Standards improved through the years of school reform because Governments put their trust in heads and teachers, parents, and the philanthropists and public servants who sponsored free schools and academies.”
“I must confess I am worried about the Education Secretary and her future employment prospects. She may share the confusion of the public and wonder whether the Prime Minister is a socialist or a pragmatist, a tax-and-spend lefty or a quango cutter, a human rights lawyer or a war leader, but Education Ministers seem to have missed the latest McSweeney memo. While the reformer in the Department for Work and Pensions says she wants to get people off welfare and into work, and the reformer in the Department of Health and Social Care holds up school reform and academies as the model for his changes to the NHS, the luddites in the Education Department are taking a hammer to the machinery that has made English schools the best in the west.”
“As Margaret Thatcher, not just a former Prime Minister but a former Education Secretary, once said: “If they attack you personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.” And this is the truth: the Education Secretary does not have a single political argument for this disgraceful act of policy vandalism, but she is determined to ignore those who know better than her and push on. And the people who lose out, I am afraid, will be the children, from ordinary working families the length and breadth of the country, denied the best we can give them, unaware that a better and brighter future has been stolen from them thanks to nothing more than vindictive left-wing dogma.”
“The Minister gave me a frown but she can intervene and admit the success of English schools in those rankings if she wishes. It is why, when Michaela was once again selected— [Interruption.] Would the Minister like to intervene? No, apparently not. It is why, when Michaela was once again the best-ranked school in the country for progress, the Secretary of State could not bring herself even to congratulate Katherine Birbalsingh when I invited her to do so from these Benches. It is why the Education Secretary’s special adviser briefed the newspapers that Ms Birbalsingh is a liar, and why he briefed the newspapers against Amanda Spielman, former head of Ofsted, attacking her very personally as a “failure” and a Conservative.”
“It is obviously ridiculous that the Justice Secretary is on her knees before a quango, asking it to respect the principle of equality before the law, but this is not the only example. The Judicial College’s equal treatment handbook says: “to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.” Will the Minister condemn that logic and say, “No, we must not treat defendants differently because of their race or religion”?”
“Legal workers have reported problems to the police and the Home Office, but that has fuelled tensions as they compete for orders and has even led to violent clashes between legal and illegal riders in Brighton and London, including physical beatings and damage to bikes. People working illegally for these big companies are working longer hours round the clock for lower fees, never knowing when their last payday might be. They use group chats to share information and evade Home Office immigration raids. We do not even know how many substitute riders there are for these companies at any given time. A spokesman for the App Drivers and Couriers Union says: “Unfortunately there is this loophole that allows some bad people to come through. They are not vetted so they could do anything.””
“But that is only the tip of the iceberg: insurance companies report unauthorised riders involved in motor and personal injury cases. That is happening because undocumented migrants are renting rider accounts for between £70 and £100 a week. Profiles have been bought for as much as £5,000. The i Paper found more than 100,000 people on Facebook groups where identities have been traded for years, including one group that gained around 28,000 members in less than 18 months. Illegal migrants are using social media apps to rent accounts and share information on a significant scale. Today, we only have figures from press investigations, but we can find copious examples across the internet with ease.”
“By undercutting domestic workers—British workers—and exploiting those with no legal right to be here, companies are privatising profits and socialising costs. Promises from such companies to introduce tougher security checks have not made the problem go away. We should all be appalled by this state of affairs, because nobody should be above the law. During random checks two years ago, the Home Office found that two in five delivery riders who were stopped were working illegally. In the same month, 60 riders from Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Just Eat were arrested in London for immigration offences, including working illegally and holding false documentation. Last month, Deliveroo sacked more than 100 riders who shared their accounts with illegal migrants.”
“It is a dereliction of duty to pass responsibility for compliance with criminal and right-to-work checks on to workers, but those companies clearly have an interest in maintaining a status quo in which undocumented migrants take the lowest fees in delivery apps. Data from the Rodeo app shows the effect of that abuse on riders’ order fees. Just Eat riders saw their fees drop by 14.4%, from £6.53 in 2021 to £5.59 in 2023. There was a 3.4% drop for Uber Eats order fees—from £4.36 to £4.21—during the same period. Deliveroo has blocked its order fee data from being published. Those figures are not adjusted for inflation, but it is clear to see how pay and conditions have worsened for riders.”
“There are 4.7 million gig economy workers in the UK, including 120,000 official riders at Uber Eats and Deliveroo, two of the largest delivery companies in the country. For years we have heard stories of the rampant labour market fraud and visa abuse committed by contractors related to those companies. From late 2018 to early 2019, there were 14,000 fraudulent Uber journeys, according to Transport for London. In addition to Uber and Deliveroo, Amazon and Just Eat have been linked to labour market abuses. Much of that abuse has come through the legal loophole created by substitution clauses. Amazon tells its couriers that it is their “responsibility to pay your substitute…at any rate you agree with them” and “you must ensure that any substitute…has the right to work in the UK”.”
“Before addressing the substance of my new clause, I also commend new clause 30 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox), which I have sponsored. It would give special constables the right to take time off to carry out their police duties. Other public service volunteers, such as magistrates and councillors, receive that right. I turn to my new clause 105. Ministers have said that they will consult on employment status and moving towards a two-part legal framework that identifies people who are genuinely self-employed. I support that ambition, and I am grateful to the Minister for his warm words in Committee, but my new clause provides a way to resolve a particular abuse and hold big employers in the gig economy to account.”
“I rise to speak in favour of my new clause 105. The labour abuse that it seeks to address is the wrongful use of substitution clauses by gig economy workers. To guarantee fairness and justice in the labour market, it is crucial that there be transparency, which can be delivered through the introduction of a comprehensive register of all dependent contractors. That will help to ensure that employment rights are upheld and pay is not suppressed through illegitimate competition, but it will also support the enforcement of right-to-work checks. The unlawful employment of migrants with no right to work here is not good for taxpayers, British workers or migrants who follow the rules, yet substitution clauses allow what have become known as “Deliveroo visas”—the industrial scale abuse of our immigration and labour laws.”
“I do not see why the Government should not support this new clause. This seems to be an obvious example of labour market abuse, but the difference with many of the provisions in the Bill is that my new clause does not directly benefit trade unions who pay for the Labour party. Sadly, we know that there have been many sexual assaults and attacks committed by substitute workers. New clause 105 proposes the robust regulation of substitution clauses. Amazon, Uber, Deliveroo and the rest would have to do their due diligence and, just like everyone else, ensure that all their riders are who they say they are and have the right to work in this country. Introducing such a change would reduce labour abuse, protect our communities and deliver a fairer labour market.”
“Parents and pupils will think that Ministers are on another planet when they hear such answers. SATs in years 2 and 6 mean that primary schools can be held accountable, and that we can measure progress data through secondary education, but the National Education Union says that SATs “do not benefit learning” and wants the Government to abolish them. Will the Minister rule out abolishing SATs in primary schools—yes or no?”
“Last July, the Judicial College’s “Equal Treatment Bench Book” said that “in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.” Putting that principle into practice, the bench book warns, for example, that the “family impact of custodial sentences was particularly acute for black mothers, as far more black…families…are headed by a lone parent”. Similar attitudes exist in policing. The “Police Race Action Plan”, published by the College of Policing, promised to stop the over-policing of black communities and complained that such communities are over-policed, but under-protected. The action plan noted that black people are more likely than white people to be murdered and to be victims of knife crime, but it failed to add that black people are more likely to commit these crimes, too.”
“The sentencing guidelines published last week explicitly instruct judges that a pre-sentence report will normally be considered necessary if the perpetrator of a crime is from an ethnic minority, cultural minority, faith minority community or is female, transgender, a drug addict or a victim of modern slavery, trafficking, or exploitation. The guidelines are clear that minorities should receive lesser punishments than white people, especially white men. The provisions about slavery, trafficking and exploitation are an invitation for lawyers to help illegal immigrants to escape the reach of the law. That is not the first official direction to tell judges to put identity politics before the once sacred principle of equality before the law.”
“There is much in the Bill with which my party agrees. In fact, many of its provisions were written by my party in government, so it was strange to hear the more partisan remarks from the Home Secretary earlier in the debate. After decades in which crime was falling, that happy trend has sadly begun to reverse. The Home Secretary noted that overall crime increased by 12% in the last year, but she did not admit that it is still far lower than when Labour was last in office. However, there is obviously much to be done.”
“Indeed. I find it baffling that we are debating the future of the criminal justice system and not talking about the erosion of the principle of equality before the law. Disparities in policing and criminal justice do exist—”
“New technologies mean that fraud, identity theft and cyber-crimes will present a huge challenge. We can no longer expect police forces to recruit generalist officers, hoping that they can all offer the perfect blend of leadership, empathy, strength and investigatory skill. Instead, we need greater specialisation. As I said, it seems crazy that we are debating this Bill without debating whether we remain equal before the law. There is much to be welcomed in the Bill, but I hope we will see far greater energy in the undeniably tough job of police reform.”
“The College of Policing should be directed by the Home Secretary to ensure that forces focus more clearly on crime fighting. We need to reduce the size of the Met in London, with its national responsibilities transferred to the National Crime Agency. The Government need to give police chiefs the ability to clear out failing officers and recruit talent from all walks of life. In the Met, there should be fewer deputy assistant commissioners and fewer commanders. Training needs to be professionalised and better recorded, and workforce planning needs to be improved. There should be better use of productivity-improving technology and streamlined processes from arrest to prosecution. We need to reform the police grant to make sure that forces focus on strategic threats.”
“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was going to turn to some specific measures in relation to police reform and the Bill. According to the Government’s impact assessment, the Bill will “provide an additional 13 to 55 prison places”, yet the Government expect to see 5,000 additional crimes recorded by the police annually, resulting in 400 prosecutions and 300 convictions per year. Those numbers do not add up, unless the Government intend to continue their policy of releasing prisoners early. Passing legislation is not a substitute for genuine and sophisticated police and criminal justice reform, and I will make some suggestions to the Government. First, we should abolish the National Police Chiefs’ Council, which represents centralised unaccountable power, and transfer its functions to more accountable entities.”
“It would be an excellent opportunity for them to meet representatives of the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust, officers from Suffolk police, the Suffolk police and crime commissioner, and the fire and rescue service to discuss the next steps. I hope that today’s debate will provide us all with an opportunity to work together to improve ambulance services. I know that the problems that I have described in West Suffolk exist in other parts of the country, and we have much to learn from one another. There are solutions that can be implemented to deliver faster response times and improve outcomes for our constituents. I look forward to supporting any practical measures to help achieve exactly that.”
“This would allow the local police, fire and rescue service, and ambulance service to better serve local residents and save taxpayers’ money. The plan has the support of local councillors and several interested parties, and the Government have also made positive comments about adopting this approach nationally. I look forward to the publication of the Government’s urgent and emergency care improvement plan, as well as the 10-year health plan. I remind the Minister of the Health Secretary’s commitment, which he made on the Floor of the House, to follow up with me regarding this proposal. Since the Health Secretary made that commitment, I have not received a response to my letter. I hope that a Minister or appropriate official from the Department will come to visit us in West Suffolk.”
“This appears to have a negative effect on how ambulances are assigned for the local area, with resources sucked into Cambridgeshire and staying there. Addenbrooke’s hospital has become a hotspot for this problem: ambulances with patients waiting to be treated wait outside for long periods, instead of responding to more incidents in and around Haverhill. I have spoken to the East of England Ambulance Service several times over the past few months to learn more about the situation. It believes that the system status plan, which decides where to send ambulances, should be changed so that Haverhill becomes a priority and more ambulances can be sent there. Since my election, I have also been making the case for a co-located and purpose-built blue light facility in the town.”
“Figures from the NHS England weekly ambulance scorecard show that in the 12-month period to the end of September, Cambridge’s average response time for category 1 incidents was 7.3 minutes, just missing the national target, but Haverhill’s was 14.7 minutes. Ambulances starting their shifts in Haverhill are often dispatched towards Cambridge, which is 15 miles away at its nearest point. This is an inequality that needs to be addressed as soon as possible. The problem arises in part from the fact that Haverhill ambulance station is located right on the county boundary, at the edge of south Cambridgeshire. The ambulance station is used for maintenance, but it does not have its own ambulances on standby.”
“In January, average response times for the two highest priority incidents missed NHS targets. Official data shows average response times for category 1 incidents of eight minutes and 16 seconds, instead of the seven-minute target, and average response times for category 2 incidents of 35 minutes and 40 seconds, instead of the 18-minute target. Even those statistics obscure dramatic variation across the country. This is particularly concerning in my constituency of West Suffolk. Haverhill, our biggest town, has a population of 30,000 people, but the response times for the highest priority incidents in Haverhill are twice as long as they are in Cambridge.”
“Thank you, Ms Jardine, for calling me to speak and also for giving me my full name, Nicholas—I think the last time that was done was when I was six years old and in trouble with my mother. I applaud the hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) for securing this very important debate. I think we can all agree that this is an important issue not only for our constituents, but for every community across the country. As we have just heard, the time it takes for an ambulance to reach people in need of urgent medical care can make all the difference in saving lives. We have a responsibility to engage constructively across party lines to find solutions that work. Since the pandemic hit, we have all seen the challenges faced by our local health services, and ambulances are no exception.”
“This week, I received a copy of the national priority infrastructure Bill from the “Looking for Growth” campaign. The campaign’s proposals rightly highlight the complexity in our energy and planning systems. We urgently need more nuclear power and data centres to drive forward the artificial intelligence and robotics revolution here in Britain, but with the highest industrial energy prices in Europe, we risk falling behind. Can we have a debate about how planning can best be reformed to provide reliable, affordable and abundant energy?”
“There are lots of reasons why the Government might sometimes provide public support towards outcomes that are not necessarily the most narrowly efficient, but promote a wider social or local economic good, but they must always guarantee value for money for the families who ultimately foot the bill. Renewals obligation subsidies have fallen short of that standard. Originally introduced in 2002 by the last Labour Government, and closed to new entrants in 2017 by the last Conservative Government, the renewals obligation remains a significant drain on the public finances, providing a fixed rate of financial support through 20-year-long contracts.”
“Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire (Mr MacDonald) said about the cost of energy in rural areas, which is very often overlooked. I will not join the commentary from the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) about the predecessor of the hon. Member for South West Norfolk. I did plenty of that in The Daily Telegraph before I was a Member of Parliament. It is pleasing that Suffolk and East Anglia are so well represented today. We must always be very careful when considering how public money is spent, especially when it comes to subsidies.”
“Thank you, Dr Murrison—I shan’t promote you any further than that just yet. I am pleased to respond to this important debate on the renewables obligation certificate scheme. Although the scheme was closed in 2017, its costs remain with us and are a reminder of how difficult it can be to unwind long Government contracts. I congratulate my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Terry Jermy), on securing this debate, which I believe is his first in Westminster Hall. I am sure he will get to debate more glamorous issues than chicken litter in the future. Like South West Norfolk, my constituency of West Suffolk has chicken farmers grappling with many of the issues raised by Members, including avian flu, which the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned. I echo what the hon.”
“One of the points made by NESO was that energy bills would fall due to the expiration of the renewables obligation and feed-in tariff contracts, but those contracts will expire regardless of the speed of decarbonisation, so it is misleading to include that as a benefit of the Government’s deeply flawed clean energy plan. We will see costs increase significantly elsewhere, thanks to Government policies. The renewables obligation and feed-in tariff schemes should be a warning. The Government are consulting on substantial changes to the next round of contracts for difference, which replace the previous subsidy schemes. They include easing eligibility criteria for fixed-bottom offshore wind, as well as extending the lifetime of contracts subsidising renewables from 15 years to 20 years.”
“Introduced in April 2010, feed-in tariffs were made available for schemes with capacity for 5 MW or less as an alternative for smaller projects, such as rooftop solar panels. Closed to new entrants in 2019, the scheme still sustains 20-year-long contracts, and £1.84 billion of feed-in tariff payments were made last year. Far from saving money, renewables subsidies have come with significant long-term costs. The phasing out of the renewables obligation and feed-in tariffs is being used by the Government in their efforts to hoodwink the public on the true costs of their net zero policies. The National Energy System Operator’s 2030 report made several highly questionable assumptions about how the Government’s goal of decarbonising the grid will cut energy bills.”
“I will turn to contracts for difference in a moment. We may discuss them in this debate, or perhaps in other fora, but it is important that we are honest with ourselves about the full costs of some of the renewable technologies upon which we have come to depend. With the hidden costs that apply to wind farms, I do not think that we have been quite so honest. That is not a party political point but something that has been true across the party divide. In 2023-24 the scheme cost £7.6 billion, and it will remain high, at £6.9 billion in 2028-29, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. That proves how dangerous it can be to lock in subsidy schemes under lengthy contracts, with the cost passed on to people’s energy bills. That is not the only zombie renewables subsidy scheme.”
“I would never suggest that the hon. Lady has tracked everything that I have written through my career, but I have been making these arguments for a number of years. The Leader of the Opposition has made the point that one of the things our party did not get right in government was setting ambitious goals on things such as energy policy without having a clear enough plan to deliver them. My concern, and the concern of the Conservative Front Benchers, is that this Government are making not only a similar mistake but a graver mistake because of the speed and unilateralism of their energy policies. [ Interruption. ] I can see the hon. Lady smiling, and I hope that is in approval of what I said.”
“We need complete clarity, so that the mistakes of the renewables obligation are not repeated. Failure to do so will leave us poorer and exposed to risk and instability in the world.”
“Will the Minister guarantee that Britain will continue to have a lower carbon price than Europe, and can she still guarantee that energy bills will be £300 lower by the end of this Parliament, as her party promised in opposition? There are so many questions left unanswered, and so far only silence from the Energy Secretary. That is not because the Government do not understand the scale of the challenge they have set themselves. The Energy Secretary understands it all too well, but he will not admit publicly what his ideological attachment to net zero and his net zero policies mean for us all: nothing less than a revolution in how we live our lives, and the massive expansion of public spending for a system of energy that is less reliable and more expensive in generating power.”
“No Government have ever rejected a carbon budget, and the Energy Secretary has so far refused to come to the House to make a statement on the publication of that budget, so perhaps the Minister can tell us whether the Government intend to accept the carbon budget in full. The Climate Change Committee believes that we will need a sixfold increase in offshore wind power, a doubling of onshore wind power and a fivefold increase in solar panels by 2040. To accelerate the growth of renewables at such a pace would require a huge increase in public subsidy. How do the Government intend to address these climate and energy goals? Can the Government rule out increasing public subsidy under contracts for difference of any kind to reach these goals? By how much will public spending have to rise as a result? By how much will bills have to rise?”
“By NESO’s own admission, “Unprecedented volumes of clean energy infrastructure projects are needed to meet the Government’s energy ambitions.” As long as policy races ahead of technology, costs will inevitably increase for taxpayers and consumers, and that is before we even consider the consequences of the Climate Change Committee’s seventh carbon budget. The committee has recommended a limit on the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions of 535 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, which represents an 87% reduction by 2040 compared with 1990 levels. That is an ambitious goal, but it is one that the committee’s own data shows will come at a net cost of £319 billion over the next 15 years. If we are to debate this, the Government should be honest and open about that fact.”
“On the question of security, the Government are in such a rush with offshore wind farms that they are sourcing the turbines from China, and there are big questions about whether the technology in the turbines will continue to be controlled by the Chinese. We are having a debate right now about security and the threats presented by Russia; we could equally be talking about the same kinds of threats from China, and how our dependence on technologies produced by China and energy that is generated using those technologies leaves us exposed to Chinese influence.”
“It is absolutely our position that the Energy Secretary is trying to move too quickly. The plan to decarbonise the grid by 2030 is deemed by many experts to be unrealistic. It is predicated on a report produced by NESO, which itself says that the plan will lead to higher bills, and on calculations based on the carbon price increasing to £147 per tonne. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister whether the Government’s policy is to ensure that Britain’s carbon price should remain lower than the European carbon price for the duration of this Parliament, because the Secretary of State has so far refused to say that.”
“Therefore, can she guarantee that we will have a lower carbon price than the rest of Europe by the end of this Parliament?”
“Of course we talk to business all the time. I talk to businesses in my constituency and we have been talking to businesses and organisations representing the more energy-intensive manufacturing businesses in this country. They are clear that energy costs have been too high, partly because of issues such as high carbon prices. They are very concerned about the prospect of the carbon price rising under this Government. The hon. Lady talked about global fossil fuel markets—I have heard the Energy Secretary say that a lot when he has referred to global gas markets. There is no single global gas market in the way he describes. Prices for fossil fuels are so much higher in Europe than America, which is much more dependent on fossil fuels than we are, because of policy choices.”
“On Monday, the London School of Economics’ middle east centre will host the launch of a book called “Understanding Hamas”. One contributor to the book, Azzam Tamimi, has previously called for the destruction of the state of Israel. Speakers at the event deny that Hamas is a terrorist organisation and wrongly dismiss Israel as a “white, settler colonialist nation”. Will the Minister join me in saying very clearly that this is not an accurate description of Israel? There is no genocide, as I heard an hon. Member claim earlier, and Hamas is a terrorist organisation that seeks to murder Jews and has brought nothing but destruction and disaster to the people of Gaza.”
“Earlier, the Prime Minister said that Russia is a menace in our waters and in our skies. That is obviously correct, so can he tell us which individual Minister has overall responsibility for the security of our offshore infrastructure, such as wind farms in the North sea? Given the vital importance of military tech and hardware, will he join me in condemning the idiotic divestment campaigns that seek to undermine our domestic defence manufacturing industries?”
“It is quite clear that the BBC has not shown the standards of journalistic integrity that we expect of it in the case of this documentary or through its coverage of the 7 October attacks and the war that followed. Danny Cohen, the former BBC director of television, says that the BBC is “institutionally hostile to Israel”. Can we have an inquiry into not only this incident, but the BBC’s relationship with Hamas, the independence of its reporters in Gaza from Hamas and its wider coverage of Israel? If there is evidence of BBC funds reaching a proscribed terrorist organisation, will the Secretary of State join me in saying that there should be a full criminal investigation?”